Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021
Assess your writing situation
Exploring, planning, and drafting
A process for writing
✵ 1 Exploring, planning, and drafting
✵ 2 Writing paragraphs
✵ 3 Revising, editing, and reflecting
1Exploring, planning, and drafting
✵ Checklist for assessing your writing situation
✵ How to solve five common problems with thesis statements
✵ Choosing visuals to suit your purpose
Welcome to Rules for Writers — your college writing guide. One of the pleasures of college writing is figuring out what you think and exploring questions to which you don’t have answers. You may find that the process leads you in unexpected directions. The more you learn, the more questions you form. It’s in the process of writing and thinking about ideas that you discover what’s interesting in a subject and why you care about it.
Since it’s not possible to think about everything all at once, start by assessing your writing situation and composing a piece of writing in stages — planning, drafting, revising, and editing.
1a Assess your writing situation.
Before composing a first draft, spend time asking questions about your writing situation. Each situation presents you with choices to make about your subject, purpose, audience, and genre. (See the checklist for assessing your writing situation below.)
CHECKLIST FOR ASSESSING YOUR WRITING SITUATION
Subject
✵ Has your subject been assigned, or are you free to choose your own?
✵ Why is your subject worth writing about?
✵ What questions would you like to explore?
✵ Do you need to narrow your subject to a more specific topic?
Purpose
✵ Why are you writing: To inform? To analyze? To argue? To call readers to action? For some combination of purposes?
✵ What message do you want to communicate?
Genre
✵ What genre or type of writing is required: Essay? Report? Speech or presentation? Something else?
✵ What are the expectations for your genre? For example, what type of evidence is typically used?
Audience
✵ Who are your readers? How well informed are they about the subject? What are their interests and motivations?
✵ What information do readers need to understand your ideas?
✵ Will your readers resist your ideas? What objections might you need to anticipate and counter?
Length and format
✵ Are there length requirements? Format requirements?
✵ What documentation style is required — MLA, APA, or another style?
✵ Do you have guidelines or examples to consult?
Deadlines
✵ Do you know the rough draft due date? The final due date?
✵ How should you submit your writing — by printing, posting, emailing, or sharing?
Subject
Often your subject will be assigned to you. When you are free to choose what to write about, select subjects that interest or puzzle you. What would you like to learn more about? What problems or issues intrigue you? Writing is much more interesting when you explore questions you don’t have answers to.
Keep in mind that the length of your writing assignment will also affect your subject. A broad subject such as advertising can be a good starting point, but it is likely too general for a focused piece of writing. Choosing one aspect of that subject — in other words, narrowing to a more focused topic — will make the writing more manageable and effective. For example, you might narrow the subject of advertising to the use of pop songs in advertising or the influence of ads on body image.
Purpose
In many writing situations, part of your challenge will be determining your purpose or reason for writing. The wording of an assignment may suggest its purpose. If no guidelines are given, you may need to ask yourself, “What do I want to accomplish?” and “What do I want to communicate to my audience?” Here are some common purposes for writing; identify which one or more of these aims you hope to accomplish:
✵ to inform
✵ to explain
✵ to summarize
✵ to persuade/argue
✵ to evaluate
✵ to analyze
✵ to synthesize
✵ to propose
✵ to call readers to action
✵ to reflect
Audience
You are always writing to readers, so take time to consider their interests and expectations. Ask questions such as these: Who are your readers? What kind of information will they need to understand your ideas? What do they know or believe about your subject? What style of writing will they expect — direct or indirect, personal or impersonal? What kind of response do you want from your readers? Make choices that show respect for your readers’ values and perspectives.
Your audience is often wider than it first seems. For some pieces of writing, such as a class assignment, you will know your readers and their interests. Other pieces of writing have multiple audiences with different expectations; for example, at a job or an internship, you might write for both your supervisor and a customer. In more public writing, such as social media posts, you might never know your readers. The more your writing travels and your words stay in motion, the larger your audience grows. Whatever you write, whether digitally or in print, consider the words you choose and the tone you take so that you accomplish your purpose for communicating.
WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE: EMAILS AND OTHER MESSAGES
Whether you’re writing to an instructor, a classmate, or a potential employer, follow these guidelines for effective messages:
✵ Use a concise, specific subject line.
✵ State your main point at the beginning of the message.
✵ Keep paragraphs brief and focused.
✵ Avoid writing anything that you wouldn’t say to your reader face to face.
✵ If you include someone else’s words, let your reader know the source.
✵ Choose your words thoughtfully, and use considerate language. Without tone of voice and facial expressions to help convey meaning, a written message can easily be misinterpreted.
✵ Proofread for typos and errors.
Genre
Pay attention to the genre, or type of writing, assigned. Each genre is a category of writing meant for a specific purpose and audience, with its own set of agreed-upon expectations for style, structure, and format. Sometimes an assignment specifies the genre — a researched argument essay in a writing class, a lab report in a biology class, a policy memo in a criminal justice class, a slide presentation in a business class. Sometimes the genre is yours to choose, and you need to consider how and why a specific genre will help you achieve your purpose and reach your audience.
EXERCISE 1-1
Narrow the following subjects into topics that would be manageable for an essay of two to five pages.
1. The minimum wage
2. Immigration
3. Cyberbullying
4. The cost of a college education
5. Internet privacy
EXERCISE 1-2
Suggest a purpose and an audience for each of the following subjects.
1. Medical experimentation using animals
2. Racial profiling
3. Genetically modified foods
4. Required vaccines in schools
5. Alternative sentencing for first-time offenders